How to Schedule Twitter Threads with the Twitter API

July 13, 2023

Even with all the recent trials and tribulations, Twitter remains a powerful social media platform with an active and engaged user base. It’s a key tool for marketers, researchers, influencers, and businesses to interact with their audience. A popular way to share a story or detailed information on Twitter is through “Twitter Threads” – a series of connected reply tweets that allows you to go beyond the 280 character Tweet limit – using the Twitter API to post on your users’ behalf.

There are several tools available to schedule single tweets or you can directly use the Twitter API. However, scheduling Twitter Threads, previously known as Tweetstorms, requires a bit more finesse and coding. This article will provide a step-by-step guide on how to schedule Twitter threads using Twitter’s API.

Prerequisites

There are a few steps that you need to do before sending your Tweet threads via the API:

  1. Twitter Developer Account: This is needed for accessing the Twitter API. Apply for one on the Twitter Developer dashboard. There are a few plan options, ranging from Basic (free) to Enterprise (staring at $42,000 USD per month). You can sign up for the Basic plan.
  2. Twitter App: Create a new app in your Twitter Developer account to generate your API keys (API key & secret, Bearer Token). This will be used for application authentication.
  3. Node.js Environment: Node.js is required to run your JavaScript code. Of course you can use any language such as Python or PHP, but our examples will be in JavaScript.

Step 1: Setting Up Your Node.js Environment

You may either use the default fetch function that is available in Node 18 or higher or install the node-fetch package. This node-fetch module sends HTTP requests, providing the fetch API for Node.js.

If using node-fetch:

npm install node-fetch

After installation, import the package:

const fetch = require('node-fetch');

Otherwise if you’re using Node 18+, just directly call the fetch function.

Step 2: Creating a Twitter Thread

Creating a Twitter thread involves posting a series of tweets, each a reply to the previous one. Here’s how you can do this:

const createThread = async (bearerToken, tweetTexts, index = 0, lastTweetID = null) => {
  if(index < tweetTexts.length) {
    const data = {
      status: tweetTexts[index],
      in_reply_to_status_id: lastTweetID
    };

    const response = await fetch('https://api.twitter.com/2/tweets', {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
        'Content-Type': 'application/json',
        'Authorization': `Bearer ${bearerToken}`
      },
      body: JSON.stringify(data)
    });

    if(response.ok) {
      const tweet = await response.json();
      createThread(bearerToken, tweetTexts, index + 1, tweet.data.id);
    } else {
      console.error(`Failed to post tweet: ${response.statusText}`);
    }
  }
}

The createThread function takes a Bearer Token (bearerToken), an array of tweet texts (tweetTexts), and optionally the index and ID of the last tweet. It sends each tweet as a reply to the previous one until it has posted all tweets in the thread.

Step 3: Scheduling a Twitter Thread

The Twitter API doesn’t directly support scheduling tweets. We’ll create our own scheduling function using the setTimeout() function to delay code execution. Here’s how to schedule a thread:

const scheduleThread = (bearerToken, tweetTexts, delayInMilliseconds) => {
  setTimeout(() => createThread(bearerToken, tweetTexts), delayInMilliseconds);
}

The scheduleThread function takes the Bearer Token, an array of tweet texts, and a delay in milliseconds. It waits for the specified delay, then posts the thread.

To schedule a thread to post in one hour, use it like this:

scheduleThread('your-bearer-token', ["Tweet 1", "Tweet 2", "Tweet 3"], 3600000);

Ayrshare Social Media API

As an alternative to rolling your own or paying Twitter for API access is to use our social API.

You can post Twitter threads by making a simple POST call:

POST https://app.ayrshare.com/api/post
{
    "post": "Long tweet text above 280 characters..."
    "twitterOptions": {
        "thread": true,        // required for Thread
        "threadNumber": true,  // optional to add numbers to each thread 
        "mediaUrls": ["https://site.com/image1.png", "https://site.com/image2.png", ...]  // optional one media object is added to a thread in order
    }
}

The API will automatically break up a Tweet into a thread, add thread numbers, and included images or videos for each thread.

And if you want to schedule the post for a future date, just add in the scheduleDate field with a date.

You can check out more details here.

Conclusion

This guide demonstrated how to schedule Twitter threads using the Twitter API in a Node.js environment, making direct HTTP requests using fetch or node-fetch. While this does involve some coding, it gives you full control over the timing and content of your Twitter threads.

Keep in mind, for your tweets to be scheduled for future dates or times, your script needs to be running on a server. For more advanced scheduling, consider using a task scheduling library or a service like AWS Lambda or using Ayrshare’s API that handles everything for you.

Remember to adhere to Twitter’s Automation Rules and Best Practices when using their API for automation.